The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1887-10-30
CRITICS AND CRITICISM.
The Holsters Nest, a Forgotten but Beauti-
full Poem by John Finley, etc.

Written for the Sunday Journal by B. s. Parker.
All just criticism must have o more perma-
nent basis than mere individual taste OF prefer
ence. Even the preferences of a class of readers
do not constitute rules that can be accepted as
final authority with positive degree of certainty.
Sir Walter Scott is represented to have been one
of the most savage of the critics who assailed
poor Keats and drove him into his grave To-
day We told that THE Wizard of the North"
was poet. while everybody loves the memory
of Keats. But they who turn upon Scott now err
as greatly as did he in his appraisement of Keats
Latter.day storywriters talk of "Ivanhoe" and
1.-THE Last Days of Pompeii," and Martin
Chuzzlewitt poor stuff" But the demand for
the novels of Scott. and Bulwer. and Dickens
goes at the booksellers counters all the
same. Sometimes it GIBBS. sometimes it flows,
but it is always the sure tide of stable popu-
larity. We may enjoy Mr. Howells's pretty de-
scriptions of everyday trifes, but we always
fall back upon Scott and Dickens. Victor Hugo
and Hawthorne, and Mrs. Stowe. The world
has Endorsed them because they appeal to the
intellects, the hearts, the hopes, fears and
plratons of men, and mastered them all And
for these reasons the judgment which the world
has rendered upon them will never be reversed
You might as well talk of dethronine Addison.
or putting DeFoa under ban. to indulge in
speculations about future in which Dickens
will be forgotten and Scott neglected. But it
does not follow that because they shall live and
be honored. writer's of wholly different school
sh all not also live. Excellence may characterize
many things that are altogether dissimilar in
appearance and different in quality.
An accomplished poet and critic of our own
State remarked recently in magazine article:
Take out of Byron's poetry all the immortality
and all the bonn bast, and what you will have
left will scarcely be worth keeping as the proof
that there was once a great poet" This is but
the expression of an individual preference. It
ike aStra nraf W
fleets that after The wickedness and bombast"
should be Withdrawn, the best of Childe Harold's
Pilgrimage, the Siege of Corinth, and that won
derful rhapsody beginning.
''The isles of Greece the isles of Greece,
Where burning Sappho loved and sung"
with many other great and noble things would
be left to show the measureless scope and DOW
er of the mighty genius hat faded out at Misso-
longhi. / know it is the fashion now to scout at
Byron. The world has learned to honor Words
worth and the Lake school of poets that Byron,
with that strange perverseness that bliehtsd his
life and marred, but could not destroy, the light
of his splendid genius, hated and denounced with
unrestrained bitterness. But why may we not
delight in Wordsworths melodous echoes
OF wood and stream, or love, the
of Southey and still do justice to the power
and grandeur of that genius which was SO we'll
described in those majestic lines of Pollock that
familiar to every American boy.
Byron's fame is Shakspeare's. and
the present tendency to belittle him will affect
its future no more than the efforts of cipher
tions of Shakspeares reputation. It is easy
enough to see, in the light of the present, that
Byron erred in his estimate of these mon, but
shall we in turn err in our estimate of him be-
canse we know their worth2 Who values Long
fellow Whittier the less because he loves the
poetry of Alfred Tennysonl
But coming down to nearer and more homely
themes. notice that the Indiana correspondent
of the Cincinnati Commercial Gazette has
Gently written an article upon Indiana authors
which is most remarkable for the number of
authors it fails to mention. When Benjamin
F. Tavlor. Forcythe Wilson, M. Louisa Chit
wood, Laura NJ Thurston. Prof John Clark
Ridpath Lee 0. Harris, Julia Dumont, Geo. w.
Cutter, and many more OF like fame
named in paper on Indiana literary people. it
does not seem that there is any reason to re-
gard it as exhaustive. and. perhaps. it was in
tended to be The same writer speaks of John
Finley's HOLSTERS nest as IA poem which, while
very descriptive, does not possess high order
of literary merit" If concise. perfect picture
of the primitive Hoosier home. with its rude
surroundings in simple, easy language, does not
reach a high order of literary excellence I am
at loss to know what constitutes literary excel
lence. Perhaps Mr.. S. would prefer words
of "ponderous weight and laundering sound" or
the painted water of the modern society ballad.
But it is more likely that he has fallen into
oft-repeated error. viz, that John Finley was a
sort of diamond in the rough, mainly worthy Of
note because he lived and wrote in early back
woods days As Mr.. s. is a
VEIN readily Reform bs opinion Il se r
turn to the modest volume in which Mr. Ficley's
verse is enshrned and read such poems
bachelors
and others that might we'll be named ir this con-
nection. So perfect is the semi Irish patos of
Bachelors Hail." and so ife-lke the picture it
presents, that more ambitious publishers
of Tom Moore's poems have included it with
that poets famous Irish melodies. 1t is greatly
to be- regretted that Finley wrote SO little for
in quality and so wholesome in character that
long for Hereafter juster
o ss bese assaneS
''The Hoosier's Nest" which is the best picture
that ever was Or ever will be painted of the
early pioneer nome in the wild woods of In
pioneer period that will not die. It is not a
great poem as 1.-THE Princess" or Paradise
Lost" or 1.-The Essay on Man." are great poems,
but has the same quality of greatness that be-
longs to Tam O'Shanter's Ride" and 1.-The
Heather Chinee." It IS the genius of simple de-
scription applied to a homeiy but striking sub
ject. Finley exercised much influence upon
public publ opinion in t his day Away va,
the purport of which to cut down the
salaries of county officers to merely nominal
figures. Then it was that Finley. who was clerk
of Wayne county. out with his famous
"Plea of the Clerk of Old WAYNE" The big
hearted, iovial old boys who made up the Legis-
iature soon fitted the words of Finley's plea to
the then popular air of 'Old Rossum the Bow"
and, led by such roaring old chorsters
Fletcher Tevs. DIR. Dobson and others.
sang the pending Fee and Salary Bill to death,
to the chorus of
'aThen christen the bill in terrorum
Starvation according to law
In the year 1854, when l was younger than
am now, (if that strange assertion NAV be
ceptedl. and more enthusiastic also, addressed
some very lame stanzas to Finley, requesting
him no longer to neglect his harp,
But once its chords awaken
To thy songs blithe melody"
stretching the invitation, which would have
been better expressed in a half dozen lines Of
compact Engl ish, through seven fourline stan
Zas Finley. with a kindness and graciousness
that were natural to him. responded to the ap-
peal of his boyish admirer through the columns
of the local paper-the Richmond Palladium
in lines that have always seemed
to me to be exceedingly beautiful and appropri-
ate to his own time and surroundings l think
they have scarcely been in print since the time
of their appearance in the county paper. Now
that their author has long passed from the
scenes he loved so WE'LL and that none remember